Strange Flesh

by Michael Olson

  What could it be?

  Next to the bank of computers are two large metal cabinets, each fastened with a rugged padlock. Maybe this is where the real treasure is stored. I unroll my picks and am just starting to fiddle with the first when I hear steps coming down the hall.

  Could be nothing, but it wouldn’t do to get caught in here, so I grab my tools and retreat to the storage nook. A wedge of light breaks the darkness, and I hear something dropping onto one of the tables. The room’s fluorescent lights flicker to life.

  Damn.

  Xan and Garriott enter. They’re in the midst of a dispute about the quality of data passing between two elements of their project. There are some brief clicking sounds, and then I hear the squeak of one of the cabinets’ doors swinging open. I’m dying to take a look but decide I can’t risk it.

  They argue for another minute until I hear the sound of someone relocking the cabinet. The lights go out, and the second they throw the dead bolt, I scamper back through the hole in the wall and drop into Cross’s office. I run out the door and around to the main hallway.

  Xan is saying, “—never going to work unless you can clean the stream—”

  I almost slam into Garriott as I turn the corner.

  Xan yelps. Her hand snaps to her mouth. Andrew jumps back, bumping into her. He drops the handle of the large aluminum case he’s rolling behind him. It hits the ground with a loud crack.

  I try to mollify them, saying, “I didn’t mean to—”

  “Christ’s tits, mate, I think my testicles have undescended,” he says.

  Xan is cross. “James, what are you doing racing about in the dark?”

  I can see hackles rising, so I temporize. “I, ah, was getting a drink, and I heard y’all come in. So I just wanted to catch you before you left again.”

  They both squint at me.

  “I’m crawling the walls with boredom. Capturing hours of video. I thought maybe I could help y’all if you want.”

  Xan starts to say, “Thank you, but no, we’ll—”

  Garriott interrupts her. “Xan . . . Let him have at it. You know we don’t have time for arsing around. Give him the simulated stuff and see what’s what. He sorted me the other night.” Garriott suppresses a yawn and consults his watch. With a shriek, he grabs his case and scurries toward his office.

  Xan gives me a long appraising look and says, “Really, I can handle it myself. I’ve no need to impose on your rather suspicious generosity.”

  “It’s not suspicious at all. Maybe I need a favor from you.”

  “All right, what?”

  “I’d like to interview you. But we’ll get to that later. For now, show me this dastardly data.”

  Nine hours pass. Xan and I are cloistered in her office, sitting close, staring at her monitors. I stretch my wrist and solemnly tap F7 to test the latest version of her program. “This is it. We got it this time.”

  Xan drops her head, her fingers digging at pressure points around her face.

  The problem we’ve been working on is a thorny one. Xan is trying to use a stream of sensor values to determine the position of a number of points linked together like the joints of a robot arm. That would be straightforward, but the underlying points’ ability to shift of their own accord makes them jump around crazily. We need them to move smoothly, but it’s like we’re trying to deduce the exact postures of two fencers only knowing the forces on their foils.

  I run the program. The graphed output of the data looks different than it has all night.

  I say cautiously, “I think we may have a win—”

  “Wait.”

  None of our debug breakpoints trip, and the program runs to completion for the first time. This triggers a burst of graphic fireworks we rigged on the end line.

  Xan wraps me in such an exuberant hug that the ball chair I’m sitting on tips over backward, and we thump onto the floor. She screams comically, levers herself off my chest, and then gives me a hand up. She’s concerned that I hit my head and starts inspecting it for a bump. I should say that I’m fine, but the feel of her fingers running through my hair has dissolved my capacity for speech. I want to turn to face her, but my spine has locked itself in place.

  Perhaps she picks up on this, because seconds later my head is pronounced “quite sound,” and I’m dismissed with effusive thanks and a sisterly peck on the cheek.

  Sisterly, but this is the second time she’s kissed me.

  17

  Billy’s virtual Silling remains the province of a select few until someone posts this thread to the NOD forums on Saturday night:

  Thread: New Game Trailhead?

  Cal_Iglooa

  Joined: 9/17/11

  Posts: 357

  Location: your business

  So here’s something:

  Check out this NOD shard we found at:

  http://nod.com/ule_find/grid:334.118.797

  Screen Grabs: [http://www.flickr.com/photos/Cal_Iglooa/737027084/]

  Those among us who actually still read might recognize that castle. We’ve now got a sim based on 120 Days of Sodom.

  The stakes? Foul lucre it seems. And any of you who have read 120 will know that I mean *foul*. For those that haven’t, educate yourselves:

  A summary

  The full text

  We’ve only explored a little, but here’s how it works:

  Every day one of the whores tells a story involving 5 “passions.”

  Once she starts telling each, you can go into the dungeon and there are rooms set up corresponding to each situation. You reenact the stories with the provided NoBots, sounds, and cameras. Then post your videos back in the amphitheater.

  Good ones play up on the wall above the whore’s head. After a submission, the Duke puts out his hand with a Louis d’Or. When you take this, your NOD account is credited with 7,500 Noodles [about $5 per video].

  Not even minimum wage, you complain? Wait, it gets better. After we tipped him off, Hal_LaCoste took his time and made a couple quality nut nuggets, like the ones already playing in the rotation. We rezzed in today, and when we entered the theater, the Duke got up and said to him, “Your work has pleased us. It is now part of the Telling.” He holds out his hand, and in it there’s a purse: 75,000 Noodles! That’s $50 per video. For all 600 tortures, that == serious spaghetti.

  So much pasta raises questions:

  1) I can haz?

  2) If not, why would someone want to spend so much to crowdsource a machinima version of 120 Days?

  3) Is this new game related to the recent bubble in NOD cybering tools like our much-loved LibIA?

  Those of you up for finding out the answers, hit us up at our new forum:

  Savant

  I gather from browsing around in the forum that “Savant” is the nickname for this new place that emerged during chats between early explorers. It’s a corruption of “cent vingt,” the French word for 120. There are already a number of replies to the post, most expressing “OMF-GROFJUADBBQ” enthusiasm.

  But there are also some comments like this one from Anne_Sasha_Ball:

  Is it just me, or does ANYONE maybe have a problem with this? I cyber every day, but I have to draw the line at making virtual kiddie porn. I mean is this even legal?

  Her question ignites a firestorm of responses, and the discussion degenerates into First Amendment bickering that then wades off into tendrils about whether George W. Bush was a “genocibal rapist” and the extent to which communist Jews control the media.

  I check Cal_Iglooa’s initial Savant forum posts in which he outlines essentially the same path I took to find Château de Silling. I’ll bet the guy is one of the original GAMErs who received a pendant. What bothers me is that the number of active participants has reached three hundred in the few hours since he posted to the NOD forums. So Billy’s game has now infected a broad population of bored net people looking for something to do.

  Savant is spreading.

  18

  The New
York Harvard Club’s two buildings neatly embody the dual nature of the university itself. The original neo-Georgian edifice features an old-boy décor of polished wood and animal heads, reputed to be the spoils of Teddy Roosevelt’s shooting expeditions. The resolutely modern addition next door resembles the headquarters of an EU agency, more in the spirit of the school’s current inclination toward international technocracy.

  Blythe had texted me asking if I’d meet her for a drink after she finished with a speaking engagement here.

  I can’t think why she would have agreed to debate Mark Cooper ’96, a communications professor at Hunter College, on the subject of media consolidation. Perhaps she considered it a practice bout to hone her message in advance of her imminent congressional hearings.

  The big news at IMP is that they’ve agreed to buy TelAmerica, one of their East Coast rivals, in a twenty-six-billion-dollar combination that will make them the largest cable provider in the country. As VP for cable operations, the deal is very much Blythe’s baby. Congress loves to make a circus out of major media mergers, so she’s been called to Washington early this spring.

  The press quickly jumped on the atavistic nature of the deal. Blythe’s father first put himself on the map with a daring bid for CalCast, a much larger rival, in 1974, well before the leveraged buyout boom really caught fire. While analysts complained that Randall’s balance sheet couldn’t justify the debt required, interest soon shifted to larger deals elsewhere. Randall digested his prey and proceeded to ever-greater conquests. In taking a swing at TelAmerica, Blythe is paying tribute to her father’s legacy.

  I step in just as Blythe is winding up her closing argument. Judging by the way the crowd is nodding at her every sally, poor Dr. Cooper was badly overmatched.

  She spends a long time chatting with the attendees afterward. Her performance has compelled even some of the audience’s avowed socialists to try slipping her their résumés. Eventually she catches my eye and, covertly rattling a notional lowball, sends me to the bar to secure refreshment.

  The words “double Laphroaig neat” come out a little husky and get me a double take from the bartender. I’m repulsed by my sentimentality, but the drink is ingrained in my mind as the enchanted love potion in my secret history with Blythe.

  After the night she kissed me by the snowdrifts of Mt. Auburn Street, I took on the lone goal of wooing her. The project seemed futile to the heartsick adolescent in me, which left my autistic engineer side to take control by asking, “Isn’t courting someone really just the oldest and most fundamental form of social engineering? Well, isn’t it?”

  A woman like Blythe, with legions of men falling all over her, looked like an exceedingly hard target. But I had a few advantages. I was already a more-or-less trusted party, I had ample resources harvested from her twin brother, and I had the determination fostered by my sincere belief in the hacker’s creed:

  There’s always a way in.

  One begins such an operation with detailed reconnaissance. I admit some pretty stalkerish gambits leapt to mind, but I decided that reading her email would be dishonorable. However, I did hack the registrar’s systems to get her class schedule.

  That prompted my rising early twice a week to stake out a cozy table at the always packed café at the Science Center so I could turn it over to her and her friends when they came out of Stats 139. After a couple weeks of this, she finally showed up alone, and I blew off my imaginary class to keep her company.

  I was “delighted” by the coincidence of finding her in charge of the math/science tutoring program for Roxbury kids that I’d just joined to indulge my previously unexpressed need to serve the community.

  I wandered Cambridge scanning for the minutest signal of her presence. Like a drug-sniffing dog let off his leash and free to pursue his fixations.

  Finally, a breakthrough: I saw her coming out of the Harvard Provision Company carrying a box of liquor. In my first experience with dumpster diving, I fished her receipt out of the trash bin and found that she’d just purchased half a case of Laphroaig twenty-year. This fact evoked a memory of the slight tug of displeasure at her lips when the Hasty Pudding staff informed her that they only served Johnnie Walker.

  The next Thursday, I stood in the Pudding rehearsing the details of my admittedly thin plan to start a conversation about scotch. Isn’t it funny we’re both Laphroaig fanciers? Perhaps she’d like to sample some rare Quarter Cask I have stashed back at my room?

  As it happened, my contrived place at the bar simply allowed me an ideal vantage from which to observe our leading hockey stud, Pete Novak, asking Blythe to the next evening’s Mather House formal.

  Novak was one of those rare athletes who wanted at least part of a fancy degree before exploring his prospects in the NHL. He had a testosterone-soaked pulchritude, and I guess he represented a passable antithesis of William Coles. But I was still mortified when I heard her say yes.

  Seething with jealousy the next morning, I couldn’t help torturing myself with online pictures of him celebrating the winning goal in the Junior National Championship. But Novak was an academic all-star as well, so my rival had more substance than a mere well-marbled boy toy. He grew up in a tony suburb near Princeton, mother a professor, father a prominent local sportscaster. Probably worked for her dad, I thought bitterly.

  Digging deeper, I learned that Robert Randall had in fact acquired Joe Novak’s station ten years ago, but had fired him in the first round of automatic layoffs. Novak’s parents divorced early the next year. Shortly after, Joe Novak killed two people in a DWI accident and was still in jail. So any relationship between Pete and Blythe would have heavier baggage than the First Armored Division.

  Though I’d hesitated to invade Blythe’s privacy, I had no compunctions about Novak’s. He wasn’t a heavy emailer, but his browsing history yielded an undue amount of research on powerful sedatives and queries about local doctors with liberal views on their use.

  That seemed pretty dark, so I Photoshopped myself an invite to the Mather formal and started trying to figure out how I was going to warn Blythe.

  But she didn’t even show. I stood there nervously sipping club soda for two hours until I heard a couple of her friends talking about how after pre-gaming with them, she’d “stumbled off” for some “steak and cheese.”

  Where?

  To get to Novak’s dorm they’d have to walk right by the party. Not another bar. The Pudding was closed. If Blythe was still conscious, she’d probably balk at a hotel room. So a plausibly innocent place he could take her that would nonetheless offer plenty of opportunity to get her alone?

  I called Blake and then ran all the way to the Zeta house.

  The front door of the frat’s dingy clapboard lair was propped open, and I could hear members bellowing out back. I sprinted up the stairs and wound through the dim hallway leading toward their den. Adjoining which I knew they had two former bedrooms pressed into duty as the “bong room” and the dismal “mattress room,” where I thought I might find Blythe.

  But the mattress room’s door hung ajar, revealing only darkness. I turned back, trying to think where else she could be. Then, a bright light flashed from the alcove next to their most remote bathroom. Deep voices accompanied another flash.

  “—society whore’s not so pretty now, are you?”

  “Daddy Randall’s going to love this.”

  I crept around the corner and saw Novak standing in the doorway taking pictures with a digital camera. He was flanked by two of his teammates, one of whom was struggling with his fly. I had to sneak right up behind them before I finally saw her.

  Blythe hunched over the toilet, her lips resting on its soiled rim. Vomit covered the floor. Her backless dress had fallen to expose her breasts. I supposed she’d felt something wrong and tried to make herself sick but was too late. As the flash went off again, she looked up in mute appeal and reached for the plunger in the corner. To use as a weapon? The effort destroyed the remnants of her balance, a
nd her face made a splashy thump as it hit the floor.

  I shouldered my way in and reached for her. “Jesus Christ, guys, what kind of shit—”

  Novak checked me with his forearm so hard that the back of my head bounced off the wall, and if he hadn’t been holding me in place, I’d have joined Blythe on the floor.

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  As I closed my eyes against the next blow, I saw a pair of pale hands reach from the dark, fasten onto Novak’s neck, and rip him back out of the doorway. His minions turned to confront the better part of our heavyweight crew’s first boat. Several more hockey players followed just behind them. Seeing Blake and Novak wrestling viciously on the floor, they threw themselves at the rowers. Though the hockey team were surely the better fighters, the rowers had an average of twenty pounds on them, so the brawl escalated fast as more people kept coming up the stairs.

  After wiping Blythe’s face, I hauled her out of the bathroom and pushed my way along the left-hand wall to a short, dark hallway that led to the back stairwell.

  I set her down on the sidewalk outside and tried to revive her. Seconds later Blake loomed behind me, bloody and breathing hard. Without a word, he tenderly picked up his sister and stalked out into the night.

  The wee hours passed while I hacked the Mather House key card security system to give myself access to Novak’s suite. At six in the morning, he and his roommates were passed out, presumably from celebrating their coup against the “society whore.” I found Novak in an almost adorable state of helplessness: snoring loudly on his futon mattress, still in his shirt and tie, but sans pants. One hand remained inside his dingy white briefs, the other cradled his camera.